Monkey See, Monkey Do

Posted on by admin

Forbes, August 28, 2007

Link

William McGrew spent much of the 1970s observing chimpanzees in Tanzania. One day the chimps did something odd. As two chimpanzees groomed each other’s hair, they each lifted an arm overhead. They clasped hands, forming a kind of primate A-frame.

McGrew and his collaborator, Caroline Tutin, had just spent months observing another chimpanzee community just a hundred miles away, and they had never seen that gesture before. But at their new field site, the A-frame handshake turned out to be common.

Continue reading “Monkey See, Monkey Do” →

The Mystery of the Wandering Daddy Longlegs

Posted on by Lori Jia

Here is a lovely little creature from Sri Lanka, Pettalus cf. cimiciformis, a member of the same lineage that includes the daddy longlegs we’re all familiar with. You could call it a daddy longlegs too, but its legs aren’t particularly long (plus it’s tiny–the size of a sesame seed.)

It may not seem like much, but it poses a fascinating riddle. It belongs to a family of daddy longlegs called Petallidae. Below is a map of where other species of Petallidae can be found. They seem to be scattered randomly across the world.

Continue reading “The Mystery of the Wandering Daddy Longlegs” →

A Daddy Longlegs Tells the Story of the Continents’ Big Shifts

Posted on by admin

The New York Times, August 28, 2007

Link

Few people have heard of the mite harvestman, and fewer still would recognize it at close range. The animal is a relative of the far more familiar daddy longlegs. But its legs are stubby rather than long, and its body is only as big as a sesame seed.

To find mite harvestmen, scientists go to dark, humid forests and sift through the leaf litter. The animals respond by turning motionless, making them impossible for even a trained eye to pick out. “They look like grains of dirt,” said Gonzalo Giribet, an invertebrate biologist at Harvard.

Continue reading “A Daddy Longlegs Tells the Story of the Continents’ Big Shifts” →

I see your hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism and raise you a ribulosebisphosphatecarboxylaseoxygenase

Posted on by Lori Jia

As I’ve mentioned before, my brother Ben also blogs. An editor at Oxford American Dictionaries, he writes about words over at “From A to Zimmer.” Not surprisingly, our blogs usually don’t overlap. But Ben’s latest entry–on very, very long words, has prompted me to pose a question of my own here.

In his post, “Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism!”, Ben points out that a lot of the longest words are, as he puts it, “stunt words.” They’re cobbled together from prefixes and suffixes, but never actually used in real life. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism is a case in point–a word that is used to describe long words.

Continue reading “I see your hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism and raise you a ribulosebisphosphatecarboxylaseoxygenase” →

The Ink Keeps Spilling

Posted on by Lori Jia

Here’s the latest addition to the Loom’s science tattoo collection: from a food scientist, the molecule capsaicin, which makes chiles spicy.

To see all the new tattoos, check out my Flickr set. And keep them coming–either in the comment thread here, or emailed directly to me.

If you crave more science tattoos–not just on the body, but of the body, check out an awesome collection of anatomical tattoos. (Thanks to Steve)

Continue reading “The Ink Keeps Spilling” →